WORLD
* French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that a preventive strike on Iran could lead to a crisis in the region and called on world powers to toughen their sanctions on Tehran instead
* China and Russia will send its envoys to the international conference of “friends of Libya,” which will take place in Paris on September 1, the Chinese Foreign Ministry and Russian presidential envoy to Africa said
* Russians have descended on Belarusian border towns to buy up foodstuffs, clothes and other goods after prices fell sharply following the devaluation of the Belarusian ruble
* The main suspect in the notorious murder of Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000 has alleged that former President Leonid Kuchma ordered the killing
RUSSIA
* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the idea of reinstating elections for the upper house of parliament could be revisited as part of the country’s ongoing political reform
* Police arrested 12 people for a breach of the peace at a protest rally in central Moscow on Wednesday evening
* St. Petersburg’s legislative assembly confirmed President Dmitry Medvedev’s nominee Georgy Poltavchenko for the post of governor
* Jailed businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is seeking release on parole, has been reprimanded twice, his lawyer said
BUSINESS
* Bailiffs raided BP’s Moscow office on Wednesday after a claim from TNK-BP’s minority shareholder, Andrei Prokhorov, who cited a $2.7-billion economic loss of the failed Rosneft-BP swap deal, a BP spokesman said
* Ukraine has slashed its purchases of the blue fuel to 27 billion cubic meters in 2012 from 40 bcm this year, Energy Minister Yury Boyko said